AppleInsider Reports - analysis
<a href="http://appleinsider.com/articles/0112/imac2002.phtml"; target="_blank">http://appleinsider.com/articles/0112/imac2002.phtml</a>;
I found this article believeable or at least well-thought out. Some questions:
1) I've lost track. Is IBM now the official producer of the G3, with Moto doing no production work nor research on the now-dated processor line? Is this why IBM's new "Sahara" is going to power the new iMacs?
2) Assuming it will cost less to miniaturize components as in the iBook, is a $999 bottom price tag reasonable? If the predicteed standardized clock speed is low (let's assume 800 MHz) then this possible.
3) Is the SuperDrive worth offering in a consumer computer?
I found this article believeable or at least well-thought out. Some questions:
1) I've lost track. Is IBM now the official producer of the G3, with Moto doing no production work nor research on the now-dated processor line? Is this why IBM's new "Sahara" is going to power the new iMacs?
2) Assuming it will cost less to miniaturize components as in the iBook, is a $999 bottom price tag reasonable? If the predicteed standardized clock speed is low (let's assume 800 MHz) then this possible.
3) Is the SuperDrive worth offering in a consumer computer?
Comments
<a href="http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0110/15.ibm.php"; target="_blank">http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0110/15.ibm.php</A>;
And this is from IBM's own press release:
<a href="http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/news/2001/1017_750fx.html"; target="_blank">http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/news/2001/1017_750fx.html</A>;
[quote]Select customers are currently evaluating the hardware with general sampling available in January of 2002. The PowerPC 750FX is planned to initially debut at 700 MHz, with versions at speeds up to 1 Ghz later that year.<hr></blockquote>This doesn't make it sound like whatever Mac uses this chip will hit 1Ghz in the near future, certainly not January or March.
[edit: Fixed a few of the 218 different spelling and UBB errors]
[ 12-04-2001: Message edited by: BRussell ]</p>
That link pretty much sells me on the Flat-panel iMac, if they are sure of the component order of 100,000 per month (and I assume they meant the screens) then it's a done deal. Still just have to figure out if it's Jan, Feb, or Mar.
We've previously been told that iDVD can compress MPEG2 in near real-time solely because of the altivec optimisations for the G4 chip.
So will iDVD on an iMac create discs much slower in software (without altivec) or will the top iMac have a hardware compressor?
[ 12-04-2001: Message edited by: Mike D ]</p>
<strong>A flat panel iMac would never survive in a school setting. Apple should keep one model of the current iMac around and sell it for $499.............................................. ......</strong><hr></blockquote>
But would Apple have more than one case design and model iMac?
We've previously been told that iDVD can compress MPEG2 in near real-time solely because of the altivec optimisations for the G4 chip.
So will iDVD on an iMac create discs much slower in software (without altivec) or will the top iMac have a hardware compressor? <hr></blockquote>
perhaps the 9.8mb/sec (or whatever it is specificially) has something to do with the "fast" encoding speed.
[quote]A flat panel iMac would never survive in a school setting. Apple should keep one model of the current iMac around and sell it for $499.............................................. ......
Mike D <hr></blockquote>
give me a break. schools have thousands of laptops they give students but a stationary desktop machine with a much more durable LCD screen somehow won't hold up.
The G4 is too hot a processor for a portable....
No way will Apple release a widescreen laptop....
Funny how there are always Apple Urban Myth's.
A school setting, dangerous? Of course. But not so much as to prohibit Apple from selling the wonderful iMacs proposed. And it'll be much prettier, too!
....
sheesh.
and Apple isn't into the 2-different models with the same name thing... The old form, if it stays around will be only for education, and it will be like 799.. not for sale to the public. People who are willing to spend 800 on a computer are equally willing to spend 999 for something as much cooler as an LCD iMac would be than the old iBubble...
<strong>
1) I've lost track. Is IBM now the official producer of the G3, with Moto doing no production work nor research on the now-dated processor line? Is this why IBM's new "Sahara" is going to power the new iMacs?
2) Assuming it will cost less to miniaturize components as in the iBook, is a $999 bottom price tag reasonable? If the predicteed standardized clock speed is low (let's assume 800 MHz) then this possible.
3) Is the SuperDrive worth offering in a consumer computer?</strong><hr></blockquote>
1. IBM makes G3's. End of story. Sahara is the newest generation of G3.
2. The Sahara G3 is *very* cheap. 999 is very possible, in my mind.
3. Yes- note, iDVD is a *consumer* application, meant to be used on the *consumer* computer... Steve would love to tout being the first to bring a good dvd authoring solution to the public.
The new computer would more than likely incorporate a Geforce 2/3 Ti 200, or the new nvidia mobile solution, the NV17 (I'm just wondering, if the new model is REALLY flat, would there be room for a conventional AGP card slot?)
[quote]A flat panel iMac would never survive in a school setting. Apple should keep one model of the current iMac around and sell it for $499 <hr></blockquote> I agree. I was pushing for a couple of G4s for my high school journalism lab but I was told I couldn't order an Apple flat-panel display for the department because my [cheap] school district thinks LCDs are too costly and not worth their weight in gold. Obviously a flat-panel iMac is somewhat different because it's an all-in-one unit but keeping around an excess of CRT iMacs for the education market couldn't hurt.
[ 12-04-2001: Message edited by: cooop ]</p>
We shall see.
A 733 MHz G4 could encode DVD data at 2x; does anyone think Apple could get a 1 GHz G3 without Altivec support to get this kind of performance? I don't think so, personally. But maybe Apple has cooked something up.
<hr></blockquote>
Not sure what you mean, I was trying to say that the performance would be acceptable if the encode rate was twice the run length of the movie/file whatever. I think my "2x" was a little misleading.
First of all, I don't think that any drive manufacturer has produced a DVD-R in a low-profile form - if they had, I would think that you would have seen it first in the PowerBook G4, not in the iMac.
Second, the reason that iDVD works as fast as it does is due to the Velocity Engine (AltiVec) in the G4. If the iMac stays with the G3 in an increasing clock speed, I don't see that it would have the muscle to be able to burn DVD's in any kind of respectable length of time.
Third, currently the SuperDrive retails for $450... even given some significant price drops, I don't see Apple including a drive that (given that the price point remains around $1000, +/- $300) costs 1/3 to 1/4 the selling price of the entire machine.
I personally would put money on seeing a Combo drive, not a SuperDrive, in the iMac. Those are very available, at a low enough cost, and in a low-profile form factor which would work in a flat panel style display.